Orange drops

It's turned suddenly parky so it's nice to have some warming colours in the trap. The Sallows are good and faithful providers of these at this time of the year - here's a Centre-barred Sallow (Update: sorry just Barred; thanks to Conehead in comments) and a straightforward Sallow - the scrambled egg moth - above.  The Beaded Chestnut is brown but also has a lovely orangey glow. Here are three of them on the lightbulb holder.

There are plenty of matching micros about as well, like these two which I think are both Epiphyas postvittana, the Light Brown Apple Moth. I have also made a collage of some of the moths' wings closer-up to show the variety and charm of the current visitors.

And here are a couple more composites of recent arrivals, firstly from the top left clockwise: Gold Triangle (Hypsopygia costalis), Burnished Brass, Red-green Carpet, Snout, Black Rustic with its glinting golden 'eyes' and Common Marbled Carpet:

Then a quartet of much the most common arrival, the Lunar Underwing which comes in three colourways: light grey, dark grey and light brown. The one at the bottom left was scrambling along a pavement near my grandchildren's nest, unable or unwilling to fly.

The Willow Beauty is a frequent visitor still, the Brindled Green is a very welcome, handsome newcomer for the year and the Large Yellow Underwing is lasting well into early Autumn - all below: 

Finally, I think that this next moth is a Small Dusty Wave but the other three need someone more expert to sort them out. I shall haste me to the Upper Thames Moths blog. Update: UTM and Conehead in Comments kindly ID the last one as a Deep Brown Dart and Dave Wilton on UTM nails the other two as Square-spot Rustics. He thinks my wave is a Riband while another UTM member suggests Small Fan-footed. I will puzzle over pictures of all three.

Thanks to Conehead the Commentor, however, I know that this basking dragonfly in today's last picture is a Common Darter.

Fresh and new

 

The year advances but these sunny September days are excellent for butterflies, many of them freshly hatched, the second generation of 2022. The male Common Blue, above, is an example and here's the underside of one of its relatives, below, also on our Michaelmas Daisies which are a terrific bee and butterfly magnet. 

Ditto this Red Admiral which was nectaring so happily on flowering ivy that it was easy to creep up and get a close-in photo. After a while, it skimmed off and did a bit of posing for the the people who look after our canal.

But here's a contrast in Commas: a fresh one from the new generation and then a battered old veteran from the year's first hatching. I know how the latter must sometimes feel...

The Brimstone, meanwhile, which is usually the earliest butterfly to emerge in the UK (hence, some say, the origin of the word'butterfly' from the 'butter-coloured fly'), is into a third or possibly even fourth generation.  This one, below, was pristine - as were the Large and Small White which follow. As someone who grows Purple Sprouting, I do not rejoice at the presence of the last two.

Lastly among today's butterflies, here is a Speckled Wood which finds our gravel drive of absorbing interest. Plus some recent moths; from the top left clockwise: Vine's Rustic (I think), Garden Rose Tortrix, Frosted Orange, Red-Green Carpet, Autumnal Rustic and Lunar Underwing. 

Finally, we often wonder what creatures make little holes in our apples which have to be gouged out before we can crunch. Here is one answer: a greedy woodlouse, caught in the act.

Delicately done

 

A new moth in my garden is a rarity these days, after nearly ten years of running the light trap here. One such has just arrived however, the softly-coloured Delicate Moth which is an immigrant from the Continental mainland and sometimes beyond. Scientists believe that the paler the example, the warmer the climate where it spent its egg, caterpillar and chrysalis years, In which case, this one may be a native of the Mediterranean, perhaps even the north coast of Africa.

Immigrant moths are particularly likely to arrive at this time of year, adding a belated morsel of Summer excitement to early Autumn days during which P and I carry out such tasks as harvesting our spuds and bagging a good share for the Food Bank.

In this, they resemble our Morning Glories, grown annually from seed, which germinate quickly but then dawdle about and often seem reluctant to grow until, in mid-August, they suddenly discover the vigour of that highly successful wildflower, bindweed convolvulus. The ravishing flowers only live until early afternoon although P has noticed that in the current cold spell, they have become Early Afternoon Glories, delaying opening their buds until about 2pm and lasting until dusk.

Autumn is also a time for wasps. As well as hornets, docile and solitary creatures in spite of their fearsome appearance - and sting - we have had these sinister-looking types below. I do not yet know the ID of the first but the second, composite pictures show a Sabre Wasp. In both cases, thankfully, their spikes are for laying eggs - ovipositors - rather than stabbing foes.

The hedges are meanwhile full of blackberries and flocks of seagulls are tailing local farmers as they plough. We also played unintended host to a Willow Warbler or possibly Chiff Chaff whuch flew into our greenhouse and took ages to persuade to leave.

Finally, our granddaughter sent an email requesting an ID for this caterpillar she found which, thanks to the unusual nodule halfway down its back, I was able to supply. It will turn into a moth she knows well, the sulphurous little Brimstone which often brightens up the eggboxes in my trap.

Autumn colour

We're just getting the first hints of genuine Autumn here, as opposed to the 'fake' version which seemed to be coming with all the prematurely falling, drought-stricken leaves. This means the prospect of vivid colours in the next month or so, but the butterfly world is not waiting until then.

The Red Admirals are emerging in their end of Summer brood. Isn't it marvellous that one of our commonest butterflies is as magnificent as this newly hatched specimen on our Michaelmas Daisies, one of their favourite nectaring flowers? The black-and-white rim to the wings, a delicatefeature of most UK butterfly species when new, is pretty much undamaged and the colours blazing. What a treat!

Likewise this fresh Comma spotted by P in the C S Lewis Nature Reserve in Oxford, a lovely spot where the writer dreamed up some of his Narnia books and discussed hobbits with his friend J R R Tolkien. The 12 acres of wild wood with a large pond were saved for us all by the generosity of Dora Stephen, a distinguished academic chemist who gave the land in memory of her husband Henry, also celebrated in chemistry. The reserve was originally named in his honour but pretty much all mention of the family seems to have been dropped by the Berkeshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust to whom the land was given. That ought to be put right.

By the pond, we saw these mating dragonflies, first flying and then settling down for, I hope, a more comfortable time. Update: Many thanks as always to Conehead in Comments for ID-ing them as Common Darters.Meanwhile our grandchildren have moved house and I found this lovely Small Copper on their gradually-reviving lawn, along with a very co-operative kingfisher on the nearby river.

The moths are going through a relatively quiet time, modest in numbers - perhaps the effect of bright moons - and rather drab in appearance. Here's a selection: Light Emerald, Old Lady (somewhat woebegone but still a powerful flyer once she had woken up), Angle Shades, Snout, a very pretty Vestal and the micro moth Acleris emargana. And in the second composite photo, some of a current invasion of second generation Willow Beauties, a brood mostly confined to the southern part of the UK.

Finally, I do my best to protect the comatose morning moths from predators but not always successfully. Birds are very clever at tracking the eggboxes down, even if they are stowed away in our shed. And at least one moth paid the price for creeping under our garden table. A spider was lurking... And update: thanks again to Conehead, this is a Walnut Orbweaver, Nuctenea umbratica. Not surprisingly, as my grandchildren's treehouse is in  fine old walnut tree.

Butterfly - or moth?

The Vapourer is a fierce-looking moth with various distinctions: it has a very fine caterpillar which I once met while working on my grandchildren's treehouse, the female is flightless and resembles a woodlouse and the male, which is quite a good-sized insect, flies by day as well as night. This last characteristic has led to another interesting phenomenon: it is quite often mistaken for a Brown Hairstreak butterfly and vice-versa. 

 

By coincidence, we were trekking back to our car at the Premier Inn in Newhaven, after crossing on the ferry from Dieppe, I saw a Brown Hairstreak for the first time in my life. This makes 2022 something of an annus mirabilis for me in butterfly terms because in July, I saw the even rarer Black Hairstreak for the first time. To enjoy such new encounters at the grand old age of 72 is a privilege and of course a great pleasure. Here's the Brown Hairstreak, which gave me a very brief chance to take its picture before zooming off:

 

It was enjoying some not-at-all obvious virtue of the very ordinary but attractive shrubbery planted round Premier Inn car parks. I saw it first in flight and thought that it was, not a Vapourer moth, but a Comma butterfly because the topwing marks and very vivid underwings which alas I could not photo, are a bright orange. Here it is again, from further away:

Talking of butterflies, over in France I saw but also failed to snap a Clouded Yellow and some kind of chequered or grizzled skipper but I did get this reasonable picture of a delicious blue - Common Blue, I think, although it seemed unusually small.  Perhaps it was an omen of the Clifden Nonpareil awaiting me back in England and described in my last post.

In the moth trap subsequently, I was visited by this nicely architectural Feathered Gothic moth and nearby I found a Copper Underwing which had sadly called it a day. Like yesterday's Holly Blue, this gave me a chance to see the eponymous underwing which the moth rigorously keeps hidden when alive and well. Sadly, the moth was in too battered a state for me to make any sense of the fine distinctions between the standard form an Svensson's Copper Underwing which is very closely related.

And to conclude, some other arrivals on Saturday night: a Gold Triangle micro, Hypsopygia costalis, showing its full, pint-sized glory, the hedge-destroying Box Tree micro, Cydalima perspectalis, a neat Grayling, a Pebble Hook-tip from below and an Oak Hook-tip from above, a Common Marbled Carpet with its lovely varied colouring on a small canvas,  and a Willow Beauty.